TJ Walker explains that strong presenters develop skills by learning from bad presentations and that illustrating each key message with a short, true story makes messages far more memorable. He shares a personal anecdote about a hostile talk-radio appearance (over 20 years ago in South Florida) to show how storytelling beats quickly stated facts, and assigns listeners to create a short story for each of their five key messages.
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There's one common thing you'll find among all people who have great presentation skills, and that is they've given a lot of horrible presentations. Believe it or not, I remember my worst presentation. Once I was presenting on a talk radio show. This is more than 20 years ago. I was down in South Florida, and I was on a talk radio show, and it was political season. We were talking about politics. The host had politics different from my own. You're not here to hear about my politics, but there's a reason for me telling you this. We're having a debate on the air. And I remember going into the studio and I was very low to the ground. The chair was very low. The host was way above me, looking down across a console. And just as I said something in response to one question, the. The host yells at me and says, tj, I have more respect for a Klansman than I do for you. And I look shocked. I'm like, I didn't say anything that provocative. We continue, and I'm talking away again. Next thing I know, the host is pulling away the microphone. I'm pulling it back. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Mr. Stick. What I really think, before I could say anything else, he dips down below the table, comes back up, points a gun. Now it's talk radio in South Florida. Nobody can see it. My eyes get big, and you know what I said? Not much of anything. It was not my best presentation. It was not my best media performance, that's for sure. But I got through it. I didn't get hurt. I didn't get injured. I actually went back to that studio and that radio station a couple weeks later. And many times after that, co host, guest hosted other shows. Now, I still stayed away from that guy. That guy, to this day, I think is kind of a crazy guy. But the point is, I didn't let one horrible media interview, one horrible presentation sidetracked me, ruin me. I love to communicate. I love helping other people communicate. And I just tried to learn from it. Okay, let's step back for a minute. What did I just do there? I try to convey one point, which is that nobody's born having great presentation skills. You learn. You have bad ones. You learn from your mistakes, and you keep going. That's really just one point. But if I'd said it quickly, in six seconds like that, it's instantly forgotten. You might understand it, but it's forgotten. So instead, I told a story. Now, the story happened to be true. Best stories are. And it's generally more memorable. I have clients come up to me 10, 15 years after the fact saying, hey, TJ anyone point a gun at you lately? They remember the story, and that's what makes it effective. The big difference between great presenters and awful ones, whether they're beginners or or seasoned veterans at giving presentations, is that really good communicators illustrate every key message point with a story. Bad speakers, bad presenters, people with horrible presentation skills never use stories because they think, oh, there's no time. I'd love to, but I got to go through all the data, I got to go through all the facts, I got to go through all the numbers, and they're boring people to death. So I understand you're a beginner when it comes to your presentation skills, otherwise you wouldn't be in this class. But there's no reason you have to look and sound like a beginner to your colleagues, customers, clients, voters, or anyone else you're speaking to. And the easiest way, the absolute easiest way to catapult above the beginner crowd and the boring crowd of speakers, which is a much bigger pot, is to illustrate each key point in your presentation with a story. And let's not over complicate this. It doesn't have to be as dramatic as someone pointing a gun at you. It can just be you having a conversation with one person, a client, a customer, a colleague, about something that's related to the messages in your presentation. What did that person say to you? What did you say back? How did you feel? How was it resolved? And what's the lesson from it? That's all the story is. All of us tell stories all day long. And my clients in real life trainings constantly want to say, well, tj, I don't tell stories. And all morning long, before I turn the camera on, coffee breaks, lunch break, they're telling stories. Human beings are hardwired to, to tell stories and to remember stories. The key is you got to really look at your messages and ask yourself, when have you had real conversations with real people about these issues? Now, if you have one of your five key messages and you can't think of a single time you've ever had a real conversation with anyone about this issue, maybe it shouldn't be a key message. Maybe it is a minor message. If you've never had a conversation about it, it's probably not that important. So here's assignment right now, you listed the five messages earlier in the last exercise. Now you've got to come up with a story for each one of your message points and just jot down one or two or three words to remind you of the person or the place or where it was. So you can talk it out. You don't have to write it all out. It's not Hollywood script writing. It's just presenting. So do that right now.
